Ostaszewski: Bring home the bacon

Sunday

Jul 20, 2014 at 12:22 AM

By†Lee OstaszewskiLocal columnist

It should come as no surprise that bacon is among the most popular food items to add to any meal. Bacon has been a breakfast staple for centuries, of course, but it has since branched out to lunch on BLTs and burgers and to dinner wrapped around steak or scallops.It has been crumbled on salads and used in chowders.Bacon has even made it to dessert: Care for some bacon fudge?Thereís also a thing called the Bacon Bowl that cooks bacon into the shape of a bowl, which you can fill with salad or whatever. Clearly, bacon lovers have been actively trying to find new ways to get more bacon into everyoneís diet.Iím not surprised any longer by what they come up with. Truthfully, I am more surprised by what hasnít been thought up: How about bacon flavored coffee? Bacon yogurt? Or bacon vodka?Chances are these are already out there, too, I just havenít come across them.Americaís love of bacon is limitless. As a wise person once said (I believe it was Ben Franklin), "Everything tastes better with bacon on it." Thomas Edison often cited the bacon cheeseburger as among his greatest inventions, right behind the light bulb and the ShamWow. Stephen King gets his best horror novel ideas after eating a pound of bacon just before bedtime. He wakes up in the middle of the night with some terrifying thoughts.You donít come up with the idea of a murderous car that goes on a rampage after having a bowl of mint chocolate chip.So no one needed to tell us that Americans love bacon. But proving stuff that we donít need to have proven is what we do in this country. Now we have proof Americans want more bacon.A mobile electronic payment company, popular with cafes and restaurants, compiles the information on what people order as a way to detect buying trends. It turns out that in five of eight major U.S. cities bacon is among the top 20 descriptive modifiers used in purchases.Which cities these are was not revealed in the article I read. Perhaps the cities with unenthusiastic bacon responses wish to keep it quiet, fearing a major tourist backlash.Imagine if word got out that your cityís residents had an "Eh, baconís OK" attitude. Property values would plummet. Conventions would be cancelled. Before long the talk show Jimmys would be making fun of your city nightly.Iím pretty sure Detroit residents like bacon, so I donít think that is the source of the cityís economic troubles. Detroit is, however, perilously close to Canada where they try to pass off sliced ham as "Canadian bacon." You might as well try passing off Vancouver as being a resort destination located in southern Canada. Itís still north of Seattle.Christmas morning at our house includes a traditional eggs Benedict breakfast. The recipe I had called for Canadian bacon. After many years, what I determined was that no one in my family, including me, wants Canadian bacon. We want strips of crispy, salty, canít-get-enough-of-it American bacon. Now if my kids would ever learn to like Hollandaise sauce, they might come to appreciate our traditional Christmas breakfast.One of the greatest recent technological food breakthroughs has been pre-cooked bacon. At first I was skeptical. Then I realized that pre-cooked bacon provided the one thing that raw bacon could never offer: Itís already cooked for you.What part was I not getting?Cooking bacon requires a level of commitment few of us are ready for on an average weeknight. In the past this severely limited our overall, weekly bacon intake.Pre-cooked bacon has changed all that. We can now obtain bacon whenever we want. Another reason America is so great. It makes us a little sad, however, for Canadians.Lee lives in Medway. Email him at lee.online@verizon.net.

Never miss a story

Choose the plan that's right for you.
Digital access or digital and print delivery.